Jamie Leigh Jones, center, listens to a question along with her husband, Kallan Daigle, right, and attorney Todd Kelly, left, outside the Houston federal courthouse on June 14. A jury rejected the lawsuit filed by Jones, an ex-contractor who claimed she was raped by co-workers in Iraq in 2005 while employed by former Halliburton Co. subsidiary KRB and then held against her will when she tried to report the assault. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)

Texas on the Potomac features commentary from across the political spectrum. Today, we share with you a column by award-winning Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg.

Ted Poe, the outspoken Republican congressman, former judge and prosecutor known as one of the most prolific orators on the U.S. House floor, has finally found a subject about which he’d rather remain silent.

After long championing the cause of alleged gang-rape victim Jamie Leigh Jones, the Humble congressman has yet to make a public statement about the jury’s verdict in the case, rendered last week.

On the day the jury found that Jones was never drugged or raped by KBR firefighters working in Iraq in 2005, the Humble congressman was tweeting about unemployment and the final shuttle launch.

Why the silence? Is it just a politician scrambling to disassociate himself from a sudden political liability? Or is it that Poe fears the inconsistencies a jury discovered in Jones’ story will expose the holes in his own?

A Mother Jones magazine blog post this week by a reporter who has followed the case detailed problems with Poe’s claim that he was directly responsible for Jones’ rescue in Baghdad.

A 2007 press release from Poe’s office claimed: “Congressman Poe was instrumental in facilitating the return of Jamie after receiving a call from her father in July 2005. Congressman Poe contacted the State Department’s Department of Overseas Citizen Services, which then dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to rescue Jamie.”

Rep. Ted Poe (Diana Carlton/Hearst Newspapers)

But evidence shows Poe had nothing to do with the rescue, Mother Jones reports.

The relevant facts were confirmed to me this week by Dan Hedges, who represented KBR in the case and says he’s been friends with Poe some 30 years.

“Ted Poe is a longtime friend of mine. I have no interest whatsoever of being critical of him. But the facts are what the facts are,” Hedges told me. “He did help. He made a contribution to getting her back to the country. But before his office heard anything about it, the State Department already had her in custody.”

The latter happened the evening of July 28, 2005, Hedges said, and Poe’s phone log shows the first call from Jones’ father came July 29.

Shipping container story

Jones had claimed that after trying to report the alleged attack, she was imprisoned in a shipping container, only able to call for help when one of KBR’s guards allowed her to use a cellphone. Jones said she then called her father, who called Poe. KBR’s attorneys contended the shipping container episode never happened and was one of many lies Jones told to bolster her story.

Hedges said he believes it was Jones or her family, not Poe, who came up with the story about the congressman’s role in her rescue.

But Poe’s office didn’t do anything to correct the record. Hedges said he’s seen email correspondence showing “Poe and/or his staff kind of said ‘well, I don’t know whether I rescued her or not but if she wants to say that I did, that’s OK with me.'”

Jamie Leigh Jones on Capitol Hill. (AP photo)

Being longtime friends with Poe, I asked Hedges if he ever thought about pulling the congressman aside as he paraded around with Jones, introducing her at Congressional hearings, bestowing an award on her from a victims’ rights caucus he co-chairs, making a cameo with her in a documentary film.

Poe didn’t respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment. Late Thursday, a staffer relayed to me a statement. In it, Poe seemed to indicate he had good reason to believe he was responsible for the rescue.

Poe has no regrets

Poe says when he first called the State Department to share information from Jones’ father, “at no point” did the official he spoke with indicate she was already aware of the case. Later, Poe says, the official, named Jenny Soo, called back to tell Poe two agents had been dispatched and Jones would be returned to the United States.

“Since that day, Ms. Jones and her family have credited my staff with helping to bring her back safely to the United States,” Poe says. “I do not regret responding to a constituent’s call for help or assisting Ms. Jamie Leigh Jones and her family.”

Poe doesn’t mention the verdict in Jones’ case.

If the jury got it right, and Jones’ story was nothing more than a tangled web of lies and embellishments, then perhaps Poe simply got caught in it. For a while, maybe he didn’t mind. He got the good press while she got the legitimacy.

But, in the end, Hedges believes his friend figured out the truth.

In the middle of the trial, Jones’ attorneys subpoenaed the congressman to testify on her behalf. When Jones needed her hero congressman the most, he was nowhere to be found. On Poe’s behalf, the office of the U.S. House’s general counsel filed a motion to quash the subpoena, on the typical grounds of Congressional privilege and immunity.

That, Hedges said, “could indicate that he had, in fact, you know, kind of gotten the facts straight on the story by then.”